“We can discuss this,” he said finally. “Work something out.”
“What’s to discuss?” I asked. “Either you think my children are worthy of the same love and respect as Jessica’s, or you don’t.”
“Of course we do,” he said quickly.
“Then prove it,” I said. “Start treating them that way. Stop making excuses for excluding them from family activities. Stop teaching them to expect less from life because of their race.”
“Susan, you’re being unreasonable,” he said.
“I’m being a mother,” I replied. “The mortgage help stops. The emergency fund stops. All of it stops until you figure out how to be proper grandparents to all your grandchildren.”
I ended the call before he could argue further.
Twenty minutes later, Jessica called.
“Susan, what’s going on?” she demanded. “Dad called me panicking about the mortgage.”
“I canceled my financial support,” I said.
“You can’t do that,” she snapped. “They depend on that money.”
“Then they shouldn’t have spent an hour discussing how my children are social liabilities who need to ‘learn their place,’” I said.
“That’s not what we said,” she protested.
“It’s exactly what you said,” I replied. “I heard every word.”
Jessica’s voice turned pleading.
“Look, maybe we could have phrased things better,” she said. “But you can’t destroy Mom and Dad’s financial security over a misunderstanding.”
“I’m not destroying anything,” I said. “I’m simply stopping my subsidization of people who think my husband was a poor choice and my children are problems.”
“We never said that,” she said.
“You said my children were born to get leftovers,” I reminded her. “You said normal-looking children get priority. You said they ‘need to learn their place.’ Which part am I misremembering?”
Silence.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I continued. “You have ninety days to figure out how to live on your actual incomes. No more mortgage help, no more car payments, no more emergency loans.”
“You’re going to ruin everything,” she said. “My car payment is three hundred eighty-nine monthly. That’s almost a quarter of my paycheck. How am I supposed to manage that?”
“That’s for you to figure out,” I said. “For eight years, I’ve been helping everyone else avoid consequences. That ends now.”
“If you can convince me that you genuinely want my children in your lives, not my money, but my children, then we can rebuild a relationship,” I added. “But the days of me paying people to tolerate my family are over.”
Leave a Comment